UK

It’s not what you’d call a hard and fast rule, but when we post an entry in our “Doing a 180” feature to spotlight a new release on 180-gram vinyl, we generally tend to only spotlight one artist at a time. This week, though, we’re playing a little bit of catch-up, so we’re combining a couple of releases into a single piece, a la our weekly Digital Roundup, so hopefully you’ll forgive us for trying to condense what would ordinarily be a trio of posts into a single entry, and please trust us when we tell you that they’re all very much worthy of their own posts…particularly this first one.

Syd Barrett, The Madcap Laughs / Barrett / Opel – There are those whose knowledge of Pink Floyd starts and ends with whatever’s been forced down their throat by classic-rock radio, which means that there are countless casual fans that haven’t a clue about the decidedly psychedelic era when the band was fronted by someone other than Roger Waters or David Gilmour. That said, diving into the back catalog of Syd Barrett is an endeavor which should never, ever start with his solo work, because he’s definitely a musician whose story is best appreciated in chronological order. As such, you should first go check out Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, and Relics, and then dive into Barrett’s own output, which really only consists of these three albums: the two studio efforts he released in 1970 – The Madcap Laughs and Barrett – and the 14-track compilation entitled Opel, which was originally released in 1988 and features alternate takes and previously-unreleased songs. They’re an acquired taste, to be certain, but they’re a part of Pink Floyd’s history that every fan of the band should hear.

40 years ago, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young embarked on an outdoor stadium tour which included 31 concerts in 24 different cities and, by all accounts, resulted in some of the foursome’s greatest live performances, but while the existence of pristine recordings from these shows have long been rumored, no official recordings have ever emerged...until now.

Say hello to CSNY 1974, a collection of 40 previously-unreleased live performances from 40 years ago which – as produced by Nash and Joel Bernstein, mirrors the electric/acoustic/electric format that the band followed each night on stage and is designed to represent an idealized version of a show from the summer of ’74.

There’s a lot of Bad Company to be had here at Rhino this week, as we’ve just reissued Bad Company’s Bad Company album – which, as you probably know, also features the song “Bad Company” – on 180-gram vinyl. We’ve also reissued the band’s sophomore effort, Straight Shooter, which includes “Feel Like Making Love” and “Shooting Star” and is a pretty great slab of ‘70s rock in its own right…but, darn it, it’s just not as much fun to announce as that whole Bad Company trifecta.

If you’re a Deep Purple fan, then you’ll definitely want to check out In Concert ’72, which arrived on record store shelves earlier this week, but we’ll forgive you if you do a momentary double-take and ask yourself, “Wait, do I already have this?”

The truthful answer to that question is that you might already have a fair amount of it, but even at that, you definitely don’t have all of it. And, yes, we realize that’s an answer which requires a bit of further clarification, so here goes.

In the early 1970s, the Billboard Top 200 was Jethro Tull’s oyster: they started the decade with Benefit going to #11 in 1970, took Aqualung to #7 the following year, and by ’72, they’d made it all the way to the top spot with Thick as a Brick. Today, though, we’re here to talk about their second chart-topping album, which followed immediately on the heels of their first: 1973’s A Passion Play, released on July 6 in the UK and July 23 here in the States.

The process of recording A Passion Play was a bit unique for Tull, starting with the fact that it was the first time they’d recorded a new album with the same lineup as they’d had on the previous album. (To say that the band’s membership had a tendency to fluctuate a bit is rather like saying, “Spinal Tap had a few drummers.”) There was also a problem in the studio in which they’d begun recording the album – the Château d'Hérouville near Paris, home to such classic albums as Elton John’s Honky Château and Pink Floyd’s Obscured by Clouds – which led the band to give up the ghost and shift locations, setting aside the hour or so of music they’d recorded and start anew elsewhere.

While the realization that this year marks two decades since the release of Pink Floyd’s last studio album may inspire sighs from the band’s fans, this news should help inspire good cheer: not only has a 20th anniversary box set of The Division Bell just hit stores, but Pink Floyd’s official YouTube channel is about to start bulking up its content in earnest.

First, let’s talk about that set. The Division Bell: 20th Anniversary Collector’s Box Set kicks off with a new 2-LP 180-gram vinyl edition of the album, remastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab from the original analogue tapes, including all the full length tracks (originally edited to fit on a single LP), in a gatefold sleeve designed by Hipgnosis/StormStudios. After that, there’s a red 7” vinyl replica of the “Take It Back” single, a clear 7” vinyl replica of the “High Hopes” single, a 12” blue vinyl replica of the “High Hopes” single with reverse laser etched design, the 2011 Discovery remaster of the album, and a Blu-ray disc which includes the album in HD Audio, the previously unreleased 5.1 surround sound audio mix of the album by Andy Jackson, and a new video for the track “Marooned.”

Remember how, when we told you about Jersey Boys: Music from the Motion Picture and Broadway Musical, we warned you that the publicity train was going to be making another stop this week? Well, consider this the blowing of the whistle, because it’s time for that additional announcement, and it’s a big one... and when we say “big,” we’re talking three new releases which, between them, feature 28 discs worth of material.

Now, is that big, or is that big?

First of all, let’s shine the spotlight on the biggest of the big: Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons – The Classic Albums Box, which contains 18 albums released by the group between 1962 and 1992. We’re not going to get into a debate over the definition of the word “classic,” since hopefully we all know by now that it’s a highly relative concept, but we will tell you what albums are contained within this decidedly substantial set, which comes in a clamshell box:

Yeah, yeah, we know, there’s been just the teensiest bit of publicity about it, but we hope you’ll forgive us if we offer a little bit more today…and, uh, then some more next week, come to think of it. (Look, it’s kind of a big deal, y’know?) After next week, though, we’re pretty sure we’ll probably be done talking about it…at least ‘til it hits home video, anyway.

Today, though, we wanted to make sure that you were aware that the soundtrack to Jersey Boys is now available for your purchasing pleasure, and – better yet –it feature a mix of the music from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons that’s featured in the film as well as performances from cast members John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Vincent Piazza, and Kyli Rae. And don’t give us that “but I just wanted the original versions” or “but I just wanted the cast’s versions,” because, what, like you don’t have the options to get those already? (The answer, of course, is “yes, you do.”) Besides, this way, you get a nice healthy blend of the two, which makes for a very nice sampler if you’re looking for a gateway drug into the group’s music, so you’re welcome.

When the news broke last week that British comedian Rik Mayall had passed away, we here at Rhino instantly did more or less exactly the same thing that everyone else did: we started running through our favorite quotes from The Young Ones. (It’s probably no surprise that “Dear Mr. Echo” came up, given that we went out of our way to cite it in our “happy birthday” post to Ian McCulloch.) After that, though, we started running through some of our other favorite Mayall moments, and while we can’t quite recall if it came about before Bottom or after Drop Dead Fred, but you can bet that it didn’t take long for us to bring up Bad News.

Americans who came of age in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and watched MTV religiously on Sunday evenings will be familiar with a series called The Comic Strip Presents…, which featured not only Mayall and a few of his Young Ones cohorts but also Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Probably best described as a comedy anthology series, for lack of a better phrase, The Comic Strip Presents… featured numerous different tales over the course of its run, but it’s easily arguable that none of them made quite as much impact as the story of the fictional heavy metal band known as Bad News.

Okay, so maybe the headline kind of says it all in this instance, but we’re still gonna spell it out for you, just in case: if you’re a Pantera fan who’s also a vinyl purist, you heard about the live album that was added to the 20th anniversary reissue of Far Beyond Driven, and you thought, “Man, I sure wish they’d release that thing on vinyl,” this is your lucky week.

Yes, Far Beyond Bootleg: Live from Donnington ’94 is now available on vinyl.